…The weather decided not to cooperate with us and we got caught up in a big rainstorm, so we made some last-minute adjustments to our tour and headed up to the Jewel Box lookout at Mount Faber for a great view of the city. The skyline really is impressive. We followed that stop with a visit to the famed Long Bar at the Raffles Hotel where the Singapore Sling was invented (Singapore Sling = Gin, Cherry Heering, Bénédictine, and fresh pineapple juice). We all enjoyed one (and in some cases a couple) of the yummy drinks until the rain stopped. After the Long Bar we proceeded outside for a trishaw (rickshaw) ride through the Arab Quarter and Little India areas of Singapore, both representative of the mixed population of Singapore….

Developed sometime before 1915 by Ngiam Tong Boon, a bartender who worked at the Long Bar in the Raffles Hotel Singapore, the Singapore Sling is a historical cocktail that has made a revival over the past few years. The original recipe used only the best ingredients – gin, Cherry Heering, Bénédictine and fresh pineapple juice. While by the 1980s the quality of the drink had begun to suffer – for example, substituting soda water and bottled juice instead of the fresh variety – a reappearance of Cherry Heering and fresh ingredients has revived the cocktail favorite.

Want to know where to get a quality Singapore Sling on your next trip to Singapore? Try these top venues.

Raffles Hotel Singapore

This should be the first stop on your mission to find the perfect Singapore Sling, as this is where the drink was created over 100 years ago. Inside the hotel is the legendary Long Bar, the birthplace of the cocktail. For those who enjoy sipping their drink in a laid-back atmosphere, the two-story venue features Earthy decor inspired by the Malayan plantations of the 1920s.
Moreover, if you’d like to try a unique spin on the drink, modern day bartenders at the Long Bar have created six variations – Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter, Tropical and Courtyard. To pay homage to the Ngiam Tong Boon, however, each recipe contains at least one original ingredient. For instance, the Spring Sling contains Smirnoff Apple Vodka, Apple Sourz and fresh pineapple and orange juices, while the gin-based Courtyard Sling is made with Lychee Liqueur, fresh mango juice and ginger beer. To help guests remember their cocktail experience, Singapore Sling Glasses and Sling Shakers are available for purchase.

Fullerton Hotel, Singapore

At the historic Fullerton Hotel, Singapore (FHS), patrons can enjoy more than just your average Singapore Sling. At their onsite Post Bar, there is actually a Singapore Sling collection, featuring eight unique variants of the famous cocktail, including a Coconut Sling and a Lychee Sling. The trendy bar also features a private music room with contemporary and new world music. Moreover, guests can choose to enjoy their cocktails at the under-lit honey onyx bar tables or outside in the bar’s adjoining outdoor East Garden.

The Ritz-Carlton, Millenia Singapore

At The Ritz-Carlton, Millenia Singapore, patrons will be able to enjoy classic Singapore Sling’s in a lounge named after the famous American glass artist, Dale Chihuly. The recipe for their version of the Sinapore goes like this: 30 ml Gin
15 ml Cherry Brandy
15 ml Grenadine
10 ml Triple Sec
10 ml Benedictine Dom
90 ml Pineapple Juice
15 ml Lime Juice
A dash of Angostura Bitters
Sliced Starfruit, Watermelon and Rock Melon for garnish
“There are many variations of Singapore Sling as different bartenders tweak the cocktail’s components for the best result,” explains assistant beverage manager Karamjeet Singh. “Our Singapore Sling is completely made a la minute when orders are received. This freshness really allows the subtleties of different flavors come through, from the warmth of the cherry brandy to the sunshine that pineapple juice imbues on the palate. Our Singapore Sling is slightly less sweet and doesn’t contain club soda unlike most other establishment’s version

…..First, though, came the tour of the infamous Raffles Hotel, and a chance to try a cocktail fit for a lady.
The Singapore Sling, made up of gin, Cherry Heering, Benedictine and fresh pineapple juice, was invented by barman Ngiam Tong Boon in the hotel’s Long Bar to give women a ladylike drink to sip with male counterparts.
…

…Lukshon’s Singapore Sling
This past week’s cover story was the cocktail issue, or L.A.’s Best Cocktails, in which Jonathan Gold considers, as you can probably infer from the title, the best cocktails in Los Angeles. To celebrate the happy event, we’re giving you a cocktail a day here on Squid Ink. Yesterday’s drink was Campanile’s Dry Rye Manhattan; today’s is the Singapore Sling from Lukshon. Here’s what Gold has to say about the drink (below), and if you turn the page, we’ve gotten the recipe so you can make it at home. Who says you have to read your morning paper with a cup of coffee. Cheers.
Singapore Sling:
If you have ever been to Singapore, undoubtedly you have made a pilgrimage to the Long Bar at the Raffles Hotel, marveled at the elaborate network of ceiling fans and pulleys, a steampunk wet dream, and sucked down a nasty, sweet punch called a Singapore Sling — a concoction of gin, Benedictine, cherry Heering and pineapple juice, which I’m pretty sure wasn’t shot out of a gun when Somerset Maugham used to drink them in the 1930s. The drink was, of course, a staple in 1970s singles bars, many of which also tried to mimic the décor of the Long Bar. Perhaps the most authentic version here should be served in Marina del Rey and properly savored while wearing a leisure suit. But Lukshon, Sang Yoon’s new small-plates restaurant, is at its best when re-envisioning Western versions of Asian food through classically trained Asian eyes, and the Singapore Sling here, pared to its bittersweet tropical essentials, is a revelation. Maugham, I suspect, would approve.
Singapore Sling
From: Adapted from Lukshon restaurant; recipe courtesy of Sang Yoon.
Note: If you, unlike Sang Yoon, do not make your own grenadine and bitters, you should feel no shame in using what you buy at the store.
Makes: 1 drink

Singaporesling & Tapping the Admiral & Blood and Sand
Singapore Sling
If you have ever been to Singapore, undoubtedly you have made a pilgrimage to the Long Bar at the Raffles Hotel, marveled at the elaborate network of ceiling fans and pulleys, a steampunk wet dream, and sucked down a nasty, sweet punch called a Singapore Sling — a concoction of gin, Benedictine, cherry Heering and pineapple juice, which I’m pretty sure wasn’t shot out of a gun when Somerset Maugham used to drink them in the 1930s. The drink was, of course, a staple in 1970s singles bars, many of which also tried to mimic the décor of the Long Bar. Perhaps the most authentic version here should be served in Marina del Rey and properly savored while wearing a leisure suit. But Lukshon, Sang Yoon’s new small-plates restaurant, is at its best when re-envisioning Western versions of Asian food through classically trained Asian eyes, and the Singapore Sling here, pared to its bittersweet tropical essentials, is a revelation. Maugham, I suspect, would approve. 3239 Helms Ave., Culver City. (310) 202-6808.

Tapping the Admiral
The best way to enjoy La Descarga is probably to find a seat on the patio, buy a hand-rolled stogie if you’re so inclined, and spend an hour contemplating a snifter of the oldest, deepest rum you can afford. You’ll miss out on the rhumba band, the burlesque dancer who struts along the bar, and the yelling, close-packed crowd, but you will have experienced the rum bar at its best. Of course, you also will be missing out on the rum drinks designed by Pablo Moix, the most profound of which is Tapping the Admiral, an amber, caramel-y concoction of 13-year-old rum, cherry Heering, vermouth and a healthy dash of bitters, a drink demonstrating that old rum can be as serious as old scotch. Tapping the Admiral is named for the old legend about the famous Admiral Nelson, who died at sea and was shipped back to England embalmed in a barrel of rum, which was supposedly siphoned off sip by sip by a thirsty crew. Snopes reports that he was pickled in brandy instead of rum, and that the barrel arrived full to the brim. Still, a boy can dream. 1159 Western Ave., Hlywd. (323) 466-1324.

Ray’s Mistake
“Toro! Toro! Toro!,” chant the boys along the bar at the Tiki Ti, watching the tequila splash from a bull’s head–capped bottle held high. A dozen sets of fingers thump the bar in the rhythm of animal hooves; a dozen voices join in a final “Toro-o-o-o!” The bartender hands you a drink served in a goblet big enough to marinate a basketball. You can barely see across the room — a wrinkle in the law makes this perhaps the only bar in Los Angeles where smoking is legal, and the customers are taking full advantage — but it is difficult to order a Blood and Sand here without attracting eyeballs. You take your first sip. And despite everything you’ve heard about the Tiki Ti, about its freshly squeezed juices, complex syrups and formulae kept secret from anybody not a direct descendent of the late Ray Buhlen — who founded the bar in the early 1960s — the drink is just awful. There may be 85 drinks on the menu, available online, on a flashing screen in the corner and on a roulette wheel occasionally spun by patrons who can’t make up their minds, but what you really want is the Ray’s Mistake, a wholly proprietary blend of fruit juices, strong liquors and something with a lingering taste of almond, a cocktail as refreshing as a tickling breeze on the muggiest day of the year. Better people than you or I have tried to reverse-engineer the Ray’s Mistake, but Mike Buhlen’s hands are deft as Houdini’s. 4427 Sunset Blvd., Silver Lake. (323) 669-9381.

Singapore Sling
If you have ever been to Singapore, undoubtedly you have made a pilgrimage to the Long Bar at the Raffles Hotel, marveled at the elaborate network of ceiling fans and pulleys, a steampunk wet dream, and sucked down a nasty, sweet punch called a Singapore Sling — a concoction of gin, Benedictine, cherry Heering and pineapple juice, which I’m pretty sure wasn’t shot out of a gun when Somerset Maugham used to drink them in the 1930s. The drink was, of course, a staple in 1970s singles bars, many of which also tried to mimic the décor of the Long Bar. Perhaps the most authentic version here should be served in Marina del Rey and properly savored while wearing a leisure suit. But Lukshon, Sang Yoon’s new small-plates restaurant, is at its best when re-envisioning Western versions of Asian food through classically trained Asian eyes, and the Singapore Sling here, pared to its bittersweet tropical essentials, is a revelation. Maugham, I suspect, would approve. 3239 Helms Ave., Culver City. (310) 202-6808.

The Raffles Hotel – A Singapore Landmark
…Long Bar and Singapore Sling
The best known feature of the current Raffles Hotel is the Long Bar which is considered one of the great bars of the world. The Long Bar is where bartender Ngiam Tong Boon invented the famous cocktail called the Singapore Sling around 1915.
The Singapore Sling is a mixture of pineapple juice, gin, Cherry Heering and Benedictine. Slings are still served at the long bar but most of them are mixed and dispensed using a machine. What is believed to be an early Singapore Sling recipe is still on display at the Raffles Hotel Museum.
…

Geographically named cocktails are legion: the Manhattan, Long Island Iced Tea and the Cuba Libre are known the world over, and most have fairly similar recipes whether they’re served in New York, London or Hong Kong. Even variations have their own well-known recipes, usually following the prescribed one in the International Bartenders Association (IBA). The Singapore Sling, however, is one that comes with a great deal of controversy and variation.

Connoisseurs agree that the Singapore Sling was developed by Ngiam Tong Boon, a bartender working at the Long Bar in the Raffles Hotel Singapore before 1915. There is also plenty of disagreement as to how closely the current version of this drink that is served at Raffles is to what was originally served. Apparently the original recipe was lost and forgotten sometime in the 1930’s, and the drink that they currently serve at the hotel’s Long Bar is based on memories of former bartenders, and some written notes that they were able to discover.

Most bartenders use the IBA recipe as a base, with the absolutely immutable ingredients being gin and cherry brandy as well as lime for taste. And that’s where the similarity ends. The IBA recipe also calls for Cointreau, Benedictine, a dash of Angostura bitters and, the primary ingredient – pineapple juice. Ted Haigh, curator of The Museum of the American Cocktail, and author of Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails, insists on all of the above, as well as soda water and pomegranate grenadine. Esquire Magazine’s Big Black Book features a recipe from a 1948 cocktail guide that leaves out the pineapple juice altogether, relying on soda water for the foamy top. On the other hand, a 1982 New York Times article insists that the cause of the foamy sweetness is that the original recipe used freshly squeezed juice from Singapore’s Sarawak pineapples.

Here are the IBA recipe as well as Ted Haigh’s. Cheers to your own Singapore Sling!

To Prepare:
Combine all except soda in an iced shaker. Shake, and strain into a Collins or highball glass with a few lumps of ice. Top with a splash soda water. Garnish with a cherry, a pineapple slice, and orange.

The Raffles Hotel was established in the Late 19th century and rapidly became a meeting place for the rich adventure seeking class of western men of leisure, British colonial officers and businessmen seeking fame and fortune in the Far East, and to whom “See you at Raffles!” became the signature parting words.

To the general public, Raffles Hotel became famous through literature. Those who could not afford to travel but stayed home, read and dreamt, were swept away by the romantic writings of the greatest authors of their time, the most influential of which was probably Somerset Maugham who actually lived at the hotel and wrote some of his stores in the Palm Court.

In 1987 its importance was recognized by the Singapore authorities by naming it a National Monument, not a small thing in a city where anything older than last year could suddenly be torn down and replaced by something more modern.

Although it started out as something much more modest, the ambience inside the Hotel brings back echoes of colonial splendour with its unique blend of tropical gardens and classical colonial grandeur.

Stories and myths build romance and there are many such surrounding the Raffles Hotel.

Many of Maughams short stories deal with the lives of mostly British colonists in the Far East, and are typically concerned with the emotional toll exacted on the colonists by their isolation. For example one story entitled “Rain”, which charts the moral disintegration of a missionary attempting to convert a Pacific Island prostitute. Maugham himself maintained that many of his stories presented themselves to him in what he heard during his travels, which made him leave behind a long string of angry former hosts. Which, is probably why he eventually found himself writing at a hotel, abuzz with even more rumours from all faraway outposts of the British Empire.

As its literary fame eventually faded away in a world dominated by digital social media, Raffles Hotel remains famous as the place where the Singapore Sling was invented by the bartender Ngiam Tong Boon sometimes during the first decades of the 20th century.